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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23123623">Form of Curry</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maggie_GoldenStar1530/pseuds/Maggie_GoldenStar1530'>Maggie_GoldenStar1530</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Dar'Manda One Shots [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Mandalorian (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Cooking, Fluff and Angst, Food, Food is life, Gen, Smuggling, fluff until it's not</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 06:21:44</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,087</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23123623</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maggie_GoldenStar1530/pseuds/Maggie_GoldenStar1530</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Finding the right ingredients for Mando food isn't easy in such times.  </p>
<p>(Written mostly while watching Favreau's random cooking show on Netflix.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Dar'Manda One Shots [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1753318</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>76</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Form of Curry</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Part of the Dar'Manda Series. You don't need to have read all of that of that for these stories to make sense, but these exist within that universe.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>His contact was late. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The credits had been paid already. Kreez Vac waited in the alley, drumming his fingers. The al'verde would call him a di’kut for paying in advance, and Din, the beroya, would be pissed if the credits he worked so hard for ended up being completely wasted. To be fair, they would both be right. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But kriffing hell, it was </span>
  <em>
    <span>hard</span>
  </em>
  <span> to get the right spices these days. And the Foundlings were growing up without the proper appreciation for proper Mando’a food. He’d cultivated these contacts like a gardener. Asking, begging, pleading with the Matriarch to let him go and buy the proper ingredients. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He pointed out that she was undoubtedly tired of tasteless food, or on the rare occasion that he could get any sort of spices, they were shitty and also appallingly expensive.  Appallingly. He was pretty sure she told him he could go on this shopping spree just to make him shut up and go away.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Whatever. The point was, he was off Navarro, and he was hiding in an alley on Dantooine. And his contact was late.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey, Mando.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He looked down the alley to see a nondescript man. “You got it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, I got it. Gonna need more money.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I already paid you what you asked!” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Look, pure legit hu’ldi is hard to get. It took more work than I expected. So I’m gonna need more credits.”  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Kreez groaned. Paz would </span>
  <em>
    <span>never </span>
  </em>
  <span>let him hear the end of it. “Let me see it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Money first.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No. I’m not giving you anything more until I see what you have.”  </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He started apprenticing in the kitchens when he was barely tall enough to see over the counter. The kitchens for the fighting corps were huge, and they needed runners to fetch ingredients and wash dishes. From there he began to learn his craft- making hearty food that would fuel the Mando warriors but still was full of the flavors that were expected. Jenad. Heturam. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Any idiot could dump pepper and hot sauce into a dish and make it merely spicy, but to layer the flavors? Make a stew that burned the sinuses without overwhelming the mouth so nothing could be tasted at all? Understand how to cut the heat with acid and fresh herbs? Make food that reminded the Covert that life was for the living? </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That was art. And you cannot expect an artist to work without his brushes and paints. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>No, he needed the right spices. Needed them. His covert needed them. Food is life. One cannot live on rations alone. One merely exists.  </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Take a middling sized fowl  and divide it into parts. Have ready in powder, each separate, the following items:</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>1 spoonful dhunni’a seed, 1 spoon hu’ldi, 3 spoons sook’ mir’rch, 1 small spoon sont, a handful of salt, and a pinch of </span>
  <span>laug</span>
  <span> and </span>
  <span>ilaayachii</span>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>Have ready three onions and a chunk of butter. Cut up one onion into slices, then bruise the remaining onions into a pulp. Rub the hu’ldi and sook’ mir’rch into a pulp with water, and the same with the sont and dhunni’a. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Melt the butter over heat, and brown the cut up onions, then put in the hu’ldi and sook’ mir’rch paste with a little water. Cook for ten minutes until the hu’ldi, turns red, then add the fowl, the bruised onion, and the sont and dhunni’a, and a pint of water, and boil until nearly dry, occasionally stirring with a spoon. Sprinkle over the </span>
  <span>laug</span>
  <span> and </span>
  <span>ilaayachii</span>
  <span>, and the curry is ready to eat.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Kreez spent hours on the Holonet, looking for sources for the right spices. Making cautious posts inquiring as to where one might be able to get the real thing. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ex-soldier seeks a source of hu’ldi. Heard the legit stuff is good for inflammation. Will pay. Can you help?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Attempting to make arrangements for pick up. Delivery, of course, was far too risky- anyone trying to keep track of someone looking for Mandalorian spices would note a pattern. Hence why he’d been to three planets just to get four spices.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And now the last. The most important. He needed that fucking hu’ldi. Needed it. The whole point would be lost without it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And this chakaar was trying to extort more credits for it? </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We </span>
  <em>
    <span>agreed.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Let me see it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The smuggler held out a pouch of at least half a kilo of yellow powder. Kreez scowled, and dipped his little finger in it, bringing it under the edge of his helmet to taste. It was legit. It was GOOD. Fuck, he was gonna pay extra for this. And be happy about it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Where did you get it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fell off the back of a transport. What do you care?”  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Where was it going?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Some ex-imp bigwig or something. Dunno what he wanted it for. Inflamed joints, probably.”  The smuggler smirked.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Kreez grumbled, and held out an extra fifty credits. “That’s what you get.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The smuggled considered, grabbed the credits, and handed over the pouch. “If you have more </span>
  <em>
    <span>joint problems </span>
  </em>
  <span>let me know. I might be able to get more.”  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Kreez tilted his head. “You got a source for long pepper?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Might.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ll be in touch.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Kreez headed back to his ship, resisting the urge to skip a little. It wasn’t all the spices, not by a long shot, but there was enough for a decent version of tiingilar. They would eat! They would eat well! The Foundlings would learn exactly what heturam was. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Navarro had its good points. The bazaar had a lot of other foods. The underground lava flows meant it was easy to cook things, even if temperature control was a challenge. But they could get hot water almost instantly, They had been in that location long enough that he’d amassed a tidy collection of cooking gear. It wasn’t the joyous place that cooking on Mandalore had been, and it was lonely, by necessity- a good cook needs to taste, and tasting around the helmet was a pain.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’d noticed one of the Foundlings had been hanging around the kitchen lately… maybe she wanted to learn? He’d never really thought about becoming anyone’s Buir, but… it was something to think about. Talk to the Armorer about it. Pass on the cooking lore he’d learned, and the stories his own buir had told him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He got on the ship, and took off. Once in the black, he started to enter the coordinates for Navarro, when a holomessage popped up. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Covert under attack. Do not return.” </span>
</p>
<p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The title is adapted from a 14th century cookery book called Forme of Cury. </p>
<p>The recipe is adapted from an 1829 recipe for curry by Mrs. Turnbull, a English woman who spent time in India with her husband. The names for the spices are adapted from Hindi. </p>
<p>Turmeric: hu’ldi<br/>Coriander: dhunni’a<br/>Ginger: sont<br/>Cayenne: sook’ mir’rch<br/>Cloves: laug<br/>Cardamom: ilaayachii</p>
<p>The book I used is The Road to Vindaloo: Curry Cooks and Curry Books by David Burnett and Helen Saberi. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TWQYBLW</p>
<p>Mando'a Translations: </p>
<p>Jenad: spicy<br/>Heturam: *mouthburn* - a sought-after state of intense burning in the mouth brought about by very spicy food<br/>di’kut: idiot, useless individual, waste of space (lit. someone who forgets to put their pants on)<br/>Chakaar: corpse robber, thief, petty criminal - general term of abuse</p></blockquote></div></div>
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